


The hierophant and the fly

by sarensen



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Charles is fucked up, M/M, Mind Games, Minor Violence, Semi-Public Sex, pretentious metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 08:23:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6898330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarensen/pseuds/sarensen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik remembers that day like a bold heading in the book of his life, underlined with Charles’ naïve sentiments and punctuated with the bitter disappointment in his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The hierophant and the fly

It starts with a small thing: Charles does not sit next to Erik on the plane. They leave Russia behind, a vague and indistinct haze of snow and disappointment, and Erik sits pensive and Charles sits quiet and the air tiptoes around this thing between them.

Erik's head is noisy with _almost_ s and _so close_ s to the background of the plane's droning, a nuclear mushroom cloud slowly blooming in his window. Frustration clenches his fist and, for an imagined second, crumples the plane around them like paper and tosses it to the sea below. 

It passes, and the plane is loud and Charles is not. It isn't enough, not nearly enough, so Erik closes his eyes and thinks about Emma Frost instead.

Feels the metal around her neck. Feels it splinter and chip little bits of her away.

Charles says nothing for the duration of the flight, and neither as they disembark, nor when they get into the car. He sits next to Erik in the back seat and says nothing, so Erik's mind fills the silence with an imagined conversation:

_"You don't understand."_

_"How can I not understand? I know everything about you."_

_"You don't know anything."_

A rain drop tracks horizontally over the windowpane, spearing the spot where Charles' breath mists. 

They arrive back home (a relative term) to find the ruins of hope, and Darwin is dead and maybe it makes Charles sad, but it only makes Erik angry. _I knew this would happen_ , he scowls at his friend, _I could have told you from the start_. He's furious at the resignation in Charles' eyes, that he can be so hurt by his own innocence.

And the thing between them becomes tangible in the way Charles speaks to him, the way he never quite looks at him. It barbs his words and perches on his shoulder, glaring, heavy and opaque.

No one sleeps that night. Someone tries to hide the sound of their tears, someone else bounces a ball incessantly against a wall. Erik's head is too noisy for sleep anyway, so he flips his coin over his fingers and wonders why he's still here. Then Charles comes into his room without knocking, sits on the edge of his bed, folds his hands in his lap and goes back to not saying anything. 

Erik wants to believe that he's just upset, but Charles is never _just_ anything. So he waits, and watches, 

( _"You know the things I've seen."_

_"I thought I didn't know anything?"_

_"But you know everything. Don't you?"_ ), 

and the coin flip flip flips over fingers.

"You know what we are?" Erik breaks the silence when dawn starts to slither across the floor, when Charles' profile is etched into his eyes so much that he sees an afterimage behind his lids, "We are the hierophant and the fly."

He recalls a conversation on the steps of a monument, the way the setting sun was reflected in the water and in Charles' eyes.

Charles meets his gaze, and he doesn't say: _But which of us is which?_

Erik wants to kiss him. Erik wants to leave.

Later that day they go to Charles' mansion and Erik is surrounded by another man's memories. The bitterness of a past he doesn't now and perhaps will never know veils the expensive chairs and wooden floors like the white sheets of disuse. Erik wants to rip the sheets off and peek underneath, settle the unfairness of Charles knowing everything about him and him knowing nothing about a normal life.

But Charles simply shows him to his room, and closes the door on the thing between them when he leaves. Erik sits on the bed and feels strangely like he knows what this is, like he recognises punishment when he sees it.

Maybe they play chess, or go for a night-time stroll, or drink tea in the kitchen sitting at opposite ends of the big table, but eventually Erik breaks under the strain and says, "What is this really about?"

Charles remains quiet, so Erik tries willing him to explain, staring at him as if he can push the thoughts right into his head (and maybe, he does). So Charles explains, but not in words. It's there in his eyes, the day that Erik nearly killed a woman but didn't because Charles was there. 

Erik remembers that day like a bold heading in the book of his life, underlined with Charles' naïve sentiments and punctuated with the bitter disappointment in his eyes.

He's not sorry about that day, but he does need Charles to know that it's not on him. Not his fault. Not his failure. Erik's mission and Erik's reason and Erik's existence have been never been anything but teetering that close to the edge, violence just a breath away. It's a natural extension of who he is; lunch, maybe some beer, a knife through someone's palm. He hates like breathing, but not Charles. Not yet. He needs him to know and so he tries to tell him with his eyes. 

He doesn't think either of them have blinked in minutes.

Then Charles is out of the chair. As he walks past him he clasps his shoulder and the touch sinks into Erik, heavy, right into his bones. He catches that pale wrist, holds it; meets Charles' eyes over the curve of his arm, a distance that seems to stretch forever. 

"Don't," he says and he's not sure what he means.

The smile looks good on Charles. It's been entirely too long since Erik's seen it. He wants to kiss him again, always, never stop kissing him. 

His bags are halfway packed before he realises he _can't_ leave.

The next few days unfold before them like a roll of film, cross processed moments caught in still frames and remembered in reds, greens, blues. They train, learn, grow, and in a very short time become everything they were meant to be. 

Even Erik, even Charles. Even the thing between them. It's softer, now, a cotton candy wall of _it's okay_ and _maybe he's forgiven me_. (For what, Erik's not sure.)

The night before the day Erik will use his power to turn a satellite dish, they sit down to dinner and they're together and Erik thinks things are just starting to go back to normal when out of the blue, Charles remarks, "The hierophant and the fly."

The words are meant for him alone; Hank and Raven and that kid with the manic opera voice continue talking on their side of the table, undisturbed. 

There's an unstated question in Charles' words to which Erik is slow to respond. He dredges the metaphor from the back of his mind, a grey thing, vaguely coin-shaped. "One makes people understand things they otherwise would not. The other's survival depends on waste."

"It may seem like waste to some," Charles agrees with a tilt of his head, like he's planned this conversation, "But to the fly, it's a vital part of his continued existence." 

"An insignificant existence, and a defenceless one. One easily and readily extinguished by humans." It's an argument he's had many times in his mind; one neither of them wins, and it ends with Charles leaving.

Charles says, "And what does that make Emma Frost? A tool, an instrument? A woman you wouldn't think twice about killing."

"She was a flaw in the plan."

"One which did not benefit mutant-human relations at all, by the way, thank you, Erik."

"They're scared," Erik says, simply, "As they should be."

The silence is thick enough to slice when Charles finally extrapolates. "So I am to be the fly, then."

Erik considers a hasty departure, running from the confrontation in Charles' eyes because he knows how it ends and if he couldn't find it in himself to leave, then neither should Charles. But Charles says, "I only seek to understand, my friend."

So Erik sits again, curls his hands around the armrests of his chair and says, "This... this alliance of yours with the humans. How long do you think it will last?" He begs comprehension with his eyes. "Charles, how long before sticks and stones turn into bombs instead?"

Charles is shaking his head. "But creating a war for the sake of your own revenge, Erik, for God's sake..."

"There will be war," Erik insists, "Whether of my making or not."

Charles is quiet resignation, and he looks tired. His eyes say things like _tolerance_ and _acceptance_ , but Erik reminds himself that not too long ago those eyes looked at him reflected in splintering diamond and said _monster_.

Cutlery clinks and the vague hum of dinner conversation rolls into the silence between them like the sea, filling Erik's ears with the sound of not belonging. 

He looks away, observes Charles' wrist peeking from the under the grey cuff of his jacket, the white of it against the ebony tabletop, and wants to touch it, crush it in his fingers until Charles understands. 

Maybe it's because Charles' world is so black and white and Erik's has only ever been red, (at least, the thought occurs, Charles has had more than one option). Maybe it's because he still feels like kissing him and destroying him at the same time and--

Charles says, "So kiss me."

"Don't read my mind," is the first thing that occurs to Erik.

"Don't have to."

And Charles is getting up and getting close and leaning down and Charles' hand is on his cheek, that pale hand, that heavy hand, a hand that burns because it's so very, very gentle.

Erik's eyes fly across the table but the others haven't noticed, haven't even glanced their way and Charles must know what he's thinking because he says, "They won't know. They don't see a thing."

Erik swallows tightly, quiveringly, because this man, whose unparalleled power is matched only by his infinite compassion, this Charles climbs onto Erik's lap and puts his hands on his shoulders and he smiles.

Raven's laugh tinkles over the periphery, barely distracting compared to the heat of Charles, the energy of him, the weight of him on Erik's thighs. He's staring at the pale triangle of throat hiding under Charles' collar until Charles says, "Erik, look at me. Erik," and Erik looks up into those intense blue eyes and feels something momentous.

The air between them is suddenly close, thick like trying to breathe steam.

"Kiss me," Charles' fingers play along Erik's collar, stalling while he searches for words, "If you're so sure, then just--"

He can't continue because Erik has swallowed his sentence, inhaled syllables instead of air, and Charles' hair is soft and his fingers curl into Erik's turtleneck, bunching the wool.

When Charles pulls back from the devastation of Erik's certitude he presses their foreheads together, eyes squeezed shut against the soft needy sound Erik isn't aware of making. "This isn't," he starts, soft, so soft that Erik thinks it might just be a point of view, "Erik..."

Charles' jaw is warm velvet under Erik's lips and he smells like the sun and everything right with the world. Palms on Erik's chest stop him, push superfluously and he sways back.

Charles' lips fold around the words "You can't be the hierophant, Erik," returning to a point half made, "Don't you see? You can't bring others into the light while there is so much darkness in you."

Erik's about to grind out disagreement but Charles gets there first. "No, listen to me, my friend. What you did to that woman... Did you enjoy it? Did you look into her eyes and feel some empty part of you filled?"

He's so close, so near that Erik feels the breath of his words on his mouth. "I..."

"Do you know what that makes you, my dear Erik?" Erik looks up but Charles' voice is only gentle and only for him, filled with _I already know_ and _you don't have to hide_.

"She deserved it," Erik exhales; it's too intimate, Charles is all around him and he can barely think because Charles' energy thrums and his heat sears and the thing between them has melted into a little puddle of forgetness at their feet.

"She deserved it," Charles repeats, a low murmur that ends in a question and the lightest contact of lips, "Erik. My dear, misguided Erik. Who are you to decide that? It's not retribution, Erik. What you did to that woman... it makes you no better than Shaw."

Briefly Erik feels the oxygen leave him in a puff of disbelief, cold rushing in like water and dousing him, drowning him. 

"What did you say?" His voice is low, deliberately dangerous. Charles is playing with fire.

"I said: It makes you no better than Shaw. Just a dirty," kiss "no good," kiss "Nazi."

Erik's rage is too great to move small things; instead, the very foundations of the building quiver, metal distorting and groaning as he makes a sound as disgusted as he feels. Dust shivers down on Charles' head and Erik wants to push him off, away, but he can't. His hands stay flattened on Charles' thighs.

"Does it make you angry," Charles' eyes fix on his, "when I say that?"

Erik snarls incoherently, and he's a little scared and a lot irate because he can't move at all, because something is holding him motionless, cut off, nothing more than a puppet.

"Don't do this," he growls through his teeth. "Charles, don't."

"Come now, Erik. Don't hold back because it's me. If Emma Frost deserved your rage, then so do I. Hit me, Erik."

"No." Obviously.

"Hit me." 

"I can't."

And Erik feels his hand lift, curl into a fist, an inexorable slow arc back over his shoulder, high, aiming at Charles' face. 

An instant of panic, "Charles, no!" 

But he's too late. The fist comes down hard like the inevitable conclusion of an old argument and it shatters on the curve of Charles' cheekbone. Erik's hand aches but Charles' face is bleeding and he remembers the ring and he panics. Forgets his rage and wants to say, _No, you were right, I was wrong, just stop!_ because his hand is rising again and this time it aims for an eye. Charles' head snaps back, a sickening sound like someone plunging a knife right into Erik's chest.

"Please don't, Charles," Erik hates the quaver in his voice, loathes it more because his fist is so willing in Charles' grasp. This time Erik's shoulder snaps sharp pain and he cries out with Charles but he's not sure if it's because of the shoulder or because blood is dripping from Charles' lip.

"Why are you doing this?" Erik's eyes are closed because he can't bear to watch, because he doesn't understand and maybe he never wants to. "Just... stop..."

And "Shh, shh," Charles is all over him, stroking his cheeks and it's too tender, too soft after what they've just done. Erik opens his eyes and wrenches his face away and maybe he does it a bit too harshly because Charles' eyes scrunch up and he looks so sad. So very sad.

Erik is breathing hard, his heart drumming against his ribs. He stares and stares and frowns and stares because Charles' face, that very sad face, is whole and unbruised and unbloodied and it can't be, because he felt the skin split open under his knuckles, he _felt_ it and he thought he would never forgive this. Could never.

Maybe it reflects in his eyes, or maybe it's the wetness on his cheeks, but Charles goes back to stroking his face so softly and says, "Oh, Erik. So you do have a heart." It's an unfair statement, one he follows with, "I'll let you be the hierophant if you show them the same compassion."

Them, humans, other mutants, _not us_. Charles' eyes say, _I want you to be something you're not. For me._

Erik takes a moment, clears the dry appleskin-scratch from his throat and says, "I didn't hurt you?"

"Oh, no, you did," half-smile on perfect, bloodless lips, "Little bit." And Erik looks down and Charles' thighs are bare and he's seated to the hilt on Erik's cock and the floor falls out from under Erik, or maybe it's Erik who's falling because this can't, can not be happening. It's so wrong and it's so right and it's everything and nothing all at once. 

"Oh," he manages, weakly, "God." 

His hands can't stop shaking but at least he can move them now, doesn't know where to put them, settles for holding onto Charles' cardigan like some kind of lifeline, tying him to the earth.

There's no sound now other than his own heavy breaths; the others at the table are motionless statues - forks paused halfway to mouths and one hand caught in the act of gesticulating - and Charles looks a little contrite when Erik looks at him but doesn't explain, doesn't need to. It's easier for him this way.

The cardigan is Erik's gravity. He doesn't know whether to be angry or scared or surrendering to the lust and the want, and maybe he's all of those things at once because when Charles moves, he rips the soul right out of Erik and it's good. It's decidedly, magnificently, dreadfully good and it's slow but it's so deep and so real and for a moment, for a second, Erik thinks he might start to understand what it's like not to hate.

Because Charles the pacifist picked the violence right out of Erik's mind like a thread, wove it into a tapestry that tells a story about the thing between them, _wrong_ and _right_ and _never stood a chance_. It's beautiful for all its injustice and imperfection, an eternity of gentle movement and the white-hot burn of not quite love, but almost. In his head, Charles' voice whispers _'Trust me. It's going to be alright...'  
_   
He grunts Charles' name like a prayer when he comes. 

And there's arms around him, tightly holding, _never let you go_ -arms and he abstractly wishes he could break them off and take them with him, because he can't imagine ever not being held like this. And he wants to believe it, because for a moment, he is what Charles wants him to be and it's the most perfect moment in the world. 

But moments pass with the inexorable tick tick _tick_ of the long hand of the clock, and in the blur of the rest of the night Erik isn't sure about anything except the fact he never wants to do that again. Or maybe he wants to do it again and again, forever.

They kiss again at midnight, in the cold dark corridor, alone and small in the night.

And then dawn spills golden honey over the floor. 

"I'm sorry," Charles says, leaning against the doorframe, his eyes shadowed with genuine regret, "What I did last night... I was out of line."

Erik doesn't say anything, because Charles is right: He was out of line, and by the tiny, seething knot of rage in his chest when he remembers, Erik knows it's not something he'll ever forgive. But he thinks he understands what Charles was trying to tell him anyway.

A slow smile, a rustle and creak, footsteps on the wooden floor. 

"Erik?"

"I know," - softly, barely more than a whisper - "I love you for trying."

Erik kisses Charles (such a long, slow kiss), and then he leaves.

This is the story of the hierophant and the fly. It ends with small things: a coin through the head and a bullet to the back. Erik leaves the beach behind, alone, and maybe he wonders how Charles is doing sometimes, but most times he does not.

Erik's head is noisy with _almost_ s and _so closes_ , and it feels so familiar, but this time the helmet quiets those words and everything else.

The thing between them becomes a barbed wire fence, one they'll never tear down. Their hands meet through the chain links, fingers twisting together, but air is more substantial than that fleeting touch. 

He arrives home (a relative term) to find Emma Frost sitting on a smile and a proposition, and around her swirls the start of the Brotherhood, the natural extension of who they've become.

And Erik thinks this is not home. His home will only ever be Charles. 

Only never with Charles.

**Author's Note:**

> In the process of moving all my works over to AO3.  
> This was originally posted on Livejournal here: http://sarensen.livejournal.com/2378.html


End file.
